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1 – 10 of over 3000Warwick Funnell, Valerio Antonelli, Raffaele D’Alessio and Roberto Rossi
The purpose of this paper is to understand the role played by accounting in managing an early nineteenth century lunatic asylum in Palermo, Italy.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand the role played by accounting in managing an early nineteenth century lunatic asylum in Palermo, Italy.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is informed by Foucault’s studies of lunatic asylums and his work on governmentality which gave prominence to the role of statistics, the “science of the State”.
Findings
This paper identifies a number of roles played by accounting in the management of the lunatic asylum studied. Most importantly, information which formed the basis of accounting reports was used to describe, classify and give visibility and measurability to the “deviance” of the insane. It also legitimated the role played by lunatic asylums, as entrusted to them in post-Napoleonic early nineteenth century society, and was a tool to mediate with the public authorities to provide adequate resources for the institution to operate.
Research limitations/implications
This paper encourages accounting scholars to engage more widely with socio-historical research that will encompass organisations such as lunatic asylums.
Originality/value
This paper provides, for the first time, a case of accounting applied to a lunatic asylum from a socio-historical perspective.
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Diet therapy or nutritional therapy has become a real challenge in the fight against the increasing number of modern illnesses such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases…
Abstract
Diet therapy or nutritional therapy has become a real challenge in the fight against the increasing number of modern illnesses such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancers. The scientific community has recognized the importance of studies that will support or rebut the association of certain nutrition/energy inputs with the prevention and/or improvement of certain diseases. Patient counseling is offered by medical doctors, nutritionists and dieticians, but patients often seek additional sources of information from popular media that may not be adequately scientifically supported. Whose responsibility is it when the Diet Therapy is not an effective treatment and where does the consequent ethical and moral responsibility lie?
This chapter argues for the importance of a nutritionally educated scientist evaluating the diets that are seen to be related with the health improvement also excluding diets that are mostly related to the patients’ well-being as the Mediterranean, DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension), Ketogenic and Vegetarian diet. Diet guidelines are often explained with linguistic variables (as “reduce the input of” etc.) which can be differently perceived by the end user. The interpretation if a linguistic variable is presented using the body mass index categories using a bell-shaped curve. The preferable area fits to the linguistic variable “acceptable BMI.” But also are indicated those areas which are less preferable. Those examples of information interpretations show the necessity of knowledge transfer. The quantity of information presented in diet guidelines can be experienced as a great muddle for patients; leaving them not knowing where and how to start. So, remains the ethical and moral responsibility of all links in the chain of nutritional and diet research and recommendations. Only objective and open-minded recommendations based on the latest scientific facts can gain confidence of the social, economical, and political subjects which must put the well-being of the population uppermost in their mind.
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That opportunities for gainfully employing persons with severe mental illness should be maximized is a position around which there is virtual unanimity. But identifying obstacles…
Abstract
That opportunities for gainfully employing persons with severe mental illness should be maximized is a position around which there is virtual unanimity. But identifying obstacles to this goal and ways to overcome them is another matter – one that, in different forms, has engaged members of a number of disciplines. In this volume we bring together diverse disciplinary perspectives from psychology, psychiatry, statistics, occupational therapy and psychiatric rehabilitation research, sociology and labor economics to discuss a range of topics related to employment and mental illness. The papers included here span a range of domains, from “person – level” questions of person-environment fit to the broad societal effects of labor markets. Evaluative perspectives on various approaches that the mental health community has taken in seeking to advance the employment of persons with serious mental illness are also examined. While we will not claim to have represented every perspective currently in play in research on employment for persons with mental illness, we feel this volume represents the multi-disciplinary flavor of the small but growing research establishment in this area.
Jayson Seaman, Robert MacArthur and Sean Harrington
The article discusses Outward Bound's participation in the human potential movement through its incorporation of T-group practices and the reform language of experiential…
Abstract
Purpose
The article discusses Outward Bound's participation in the human potential movement through its incorporation of T-group practices and the reform language of experiential education in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Design/methodology/approach
The article reports on original research conducted using materials from Dartmouth College and other Outward Bound collections from 1957 to 1976. It follows a case study approach to illustrate themes pertaining to Outward Bound's creation and evolution in the United States, and the establishment of experiential education more broadly.
Findings
Building on prior research (Freeman, 2011; Millikan, 2006), the present article elaborates on the conditions under which Outward Bound abandoned muscular Christianity in favor of humanistic psychology. Experiential education provided both a set of practices and a reform language that helped Outward Bound expand into the educational mainstream, which also helped to extend self-expressive pedagogies into formal and nonformal settings.
Research limitations/implications
The Dartmouth Outward Bound Center's tenure coincided with and reflected broader cultural changes, from the cold war motif of spiritual warfare, frontier masculinity and national service to the rise of self-expression in education. Future scholars can situate specific curricular initiatives in the context of these paradigms, particularly in outdoor education.
Originality/value
The article draws attention to one of the forms that the human potential movement took in education – experiential education – and the reasons for its adoption. It also reinforces emerging understandings of post-WWII American outdoor education as a product of the cold war and reflective of subsequent changes in the wider culture to a narrower focus on the self.
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The purpose of this paper is to clarify the relationship between gang affiliation and criminal thinking.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to clarify the relationship between gang affiliation and criminal thinking.
Design/methodology/approach
A sample of 1,354 youth (1,170 males, 184 females) from the Pathways to Desistance Study served as participants in this study, and a causal mediation path analysis was performed on proactive and reactive criminal thinking, gang affiliation and subsequent offending.
Findings
Using three waves of data, it was determined that the pathway running from reactive criminal thinking to gang affiliation to proactive criminal thinking was significant, whereas the pathway running from proactive criminal thinking to gang affiliation to reactive criminal thinking was not. A four-wave model, in which violent and income offending were appended to the three-wave model, disclosed similar results.
Practical implications
Two separate targets for intervention with youth at risk for gang involvement: proactive and reactive criminal thinking. The impulsive, irresponsible, reckless and disinhibited nature of reactive criminal thinking may best be managed with a secondary prevention approach and cognitive-behavioral skills training; the planned, cold, calculating and amoral nature of proactive criminal thinking may best be managed with a tertiary prevention approach and moral retraining. Trauma therapy may be of assistance to youth who have been victimized over the course of their gang experience.
Originality/value
These findings reveal evidence of a gang selection effect that is independent of the well-documented peer selection effect, in which reactive criminal thinking led to gang affiliation in youthful offenders, particularly non-White offenders, and a gang influence effect, independent of the frequently observed peer selection effect, in which gang affiliation contributed to a rise in proactive criminal thinking.
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Adopting a sense of critical enquiry when examining historical sources, it is possible to gain a richer and broader sense of present practice. The aim of this study is to…
Abstract
Purpose
Adopting a sense of critical enquiry when examining historical sources, it is possible to gain a richer and broader sense of present practice. The aim of this study is to emphasise the importance of historical research to present practice in teasing out the different elements at work and how they developed. A core assumption is that our consciousness depends on our interactions with others.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is part of ongoing research into the historical background of the practice of discerning compassion. The methods used include archival research and the reading of primary and secondary literature.
Findings
In particular, it becomes clear that this way of working is always going to be problematic for political authorities as it promotes the questioning of accepted beliefs. This study emphasises that the core concepts underlying enabling community practice reach deep into the past and involve events not usually associated with the traditional histories of the approach. In particular, exploring outside of the traditional mental hospital background reveals a greater involvement of women than previously demonstrated. There are processes that have deep historical roots, the culture of enquiry, the benefits of mutual support and the understanding that people flourish better interacting with each other in a supportive and trusting environment rather than through coercion and instruction.
Research limitations/implications
As with all historical research, this paper is limited by the resources available to examine particular events.
Practical implications
Recognition of the importance of historical enquiry as relevant to present-day practice.
Social implications
Historical enquiry helps to acknowledge the importance of social events in shaping our present understanding. As W.H. Rivers argues, we have to understand what happened in the past before comprehending why present sociological events occur.
Originality/value
This paper is a unique enquiry into the early historical antecedents of enabling community practice. It is intended to stimulate more research into the field and to stimulate debate about the relevance of particular aspects of practice. It refers to sources that are not usually part of such discussions and, by implication, suggests that there is more to be explored. It is not an exhaustive account and is to be supplemented by another paper on leadership.
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Mental health disorders, namely, anxiety and depression, have reached an unprecedented peak; recent research demonstrates that these disorders have increased by 70 per cent over…
Abstract
Purpose
Mental health disorders, namely, anxiety and depression, have reached an unprecedented peak; recent research demonstrates that these disorders have increased by 70 per cent over the last 25 years. Additionally, developments in the field of environmental psychology have elicited that the built environment is a crucial factor affecting mental health. It is, therefore, necessary for architects to address the issue when designing, thereby using a holistic approach to promote general well-being. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
The project, Asylum: A Place of Refuge, seeks to create a reinterpretation of the eighteenth century asylum, through which the intervention of nature – vast pastures and bucolic settings – believed it had the power to cure the human psyche while, simultaneously, offering redemption. This paper examines the project in relation to multiple books and readings conducted prior and while designing. These references, many of which are considered staples in the field, refer to the important role and impact architecture and landscape have on mental health. Additionally, it discusses the ways architects can consciously design to promote physiological well-being and ensure positive psychological experience through adoption of a comprehensive approach that bridges the gap between the body and mind. Finding sources related to environmental psychology was also crucial as the research conducted in this field provides scientific reasoning to support design decisions.
Findings
By employing strategies from the readings as well as creating a stimulating space that challenges the conception of architecture, the project: Asylum: A Place of Refuge, was born. The use of a powerful, specific and emotive language inherent to the setting as well as a constant relationship between nature and the built environment creates a safe haven for people to resort to, away from the pressures and stresses of everyday life amplified by bustling cities. The ethos of the project is essentially inspired upon Ebenezer Howard’s concept introduced in his book, Garden Cities of Tomorrow, where he states that “human society and the beauty of nature are meant to be enjoyed together. The two must be made one” (Howard, p. 48).
Research limitations/implications
The application and the validity of the project are limited to a conceptual proposal leading to speculative results. Although the research paper is based on architecture-related readings and research conducted in the field of environmental psychology, to verify how this project would function in a real-world setting, it is essential to build it.
Social implications
Applying these findings and this approach to architecture can enhance the quality of life. These ideas can be applied to many different building types including, but not limited to, living spaces, workplaces and recreational spaces.
Originality/value
This paper is based on an architecture project that was created by the author as part of their undergraduate thesis. As a result, this paper and proposal is fully original.
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Naomi Gilhuis and Tine Molendijk
How should researchers navigate and interpret the moral emotions evoked in them in research on trauma? In this reflective essay, the authors discuss their experience as…
Abstract
Purpose
How should researchers navigate and interpret the moral emotions evoked in them in research on trauma? In this reflective essay, the authors discuss their experience as researchers on moral injury (MI) in veterans and police personnel in the Netherlands. Stories of MI usually do not allow for a clear-cut categorization of the affected person as a victim or perpetrator. This ambivalence, in fact, is explicitly part of the concept of MI. It means however that researchers face complicated psychological, ethical and methodological challenges during research on MI.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors contemplate these challenges by describing two empirical cases demonstrating the particular moral challenges that emerge in MI research. Drawing from literature on qualitative research and emotions, the authors distil different perspectives on the role of moral emotions in research.
Findings
Reflecting on the ambivalent and difficult emotions the authors experienced as researchers when listening to personal accounts of moral injury, the authors offer insights into the necessity and delicacy of navigating between the methodological potential and the ethical and psychological risks of such emotions.
Originality/value
This study is relevant for all researchers examining trauma, in particular when the research is surrounded by complex ethical questions. While the issue of managing emotions in research on trauma is challenging in itself, it is further complicated when the stories related by respondents challenge the researcher's own moral beliefs and values.
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The accounts of moral reform that nineteenth-century convicts offered the officials in charge were frequently characterized by such uniformity that it caused Dickens to mistrust…
Abstract
The accounts of moral reform that nineteenth-century convicts offered the officials in charge were frequently characterized by such uniformity that it caused Dickens to mistrust their sincerity and to brand them scornfully as “pattern penitence.” Unlike Dickens, however, prison officials were more willing to credit the questionable authenticity of “patterned” repentance. The paper argues that rather than an effect of personal gullibility, reformers’ attitudes can be seen as an outcome of specific interpretative strategies which, in turn, constituted a response to several institutional challenges facing the nineteenth-century Penitentiary.
Elly Leung and Donella Caspersz
This paper aims to describe an exploratory study that has sought to understand how an institutionalised docility rather than resistance has been created in the minds of Chinese…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to describe an exploratory study that has sought to understand how an institutionalised docility rather than resistance has been created in the minds of Chinese workers by the Chinese State. The study proposes that this docility has been crucial in enabling China to become a world leading economic powerhouse.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on Foucault’s concept of governmentality and uses the genealogical method to examine the historical events that have shaped the mentalities of today’s Chinese workers. Original interviews (n = 74) with everyday workers across industries and locations illustrate this.
Findings
It was found that the utilisation of centuries-long Confucian hierarchical rules by successive regimes has created a cumulative effect that has maintained workers docility and their willingness to submit themselves to poor working conditions that – ultimately – benefit the Chinese State and business, though this is at their expense. This finding is in juxtaposition to current research that claim that their working conditions are fostering a rising consciousness and resistance among Chinese workers.
Originality/value
This paper provides a novel explanation for why Chinese workers accept their poor working conditions and thus critiques current perspectives about Chinese worker resistance.
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